


Coalescence

by mabus101



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:53:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23579467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mabus101/pseuds/mabus101
Summary: The Borg have overrun the Alpha Quadrant!  Now only the reeling Cardassian Union stands in the way of total galactic domination...and perhaps beyond.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

But his revulsion was tempered by fascination-that in a universe where the collective had overrun Earth and then pushed on through the Federation towards Bajor, the Prophets' plan for Benjamin Sisko had still come to fruition, even for one so wounded in body, mind, and soul.

-Olivia Woods, Fearful Symmetry

Resistance is futile, the voice of the Collective thundered.

"Yeah," Kira responded under her breath. "Don't I know it." Under different circumstances, the other soldiers might've looked askance at the minor breach of discipline; currently, however, their attention was emphatically elsewhere. Louder, she ordered, "Prepare to open fire on my mark."

The weapons officer saluted, fist to chest. "Yes, Gul Kira."

Something deep inside her screamed protests at the title. Not five years ago, a gul would have been the enemy-someone she would murder in his sleep if necessary, and kill without the slightest compunction in battle. The collapse of the Federation, though, had utterly turned her world upside down.

She hadn't cared at the time about the handful of confused rumors that had reached Bajor's Resistance about the abrupt conquest of Earth. What little she had heard hadn't made sense in terms of tactics anyway-striking at the heart of an enemy was only smart if it was undefended, and surely the Federation had defenses to spare for its heartworld. Its government hadn't collapsed instantly-Vulcan, Andor, and other worlds had tried to pick up the pieces. Kira assumed they had worked murderously fast to build up a fleet and mount a counterattack.

The Borg, it turned out, had worked faster. A month later the first permanent transwarp aperture had opened, flooding cubes and assault spheres into Solspace. The Federation's underbelly had been exposed, and the Borg had slit it open. Kira assumed the spoonheads had rejoiced at the fall of their enemy. But the Borg made no distinctions among the local powers; they had turned on the Klingons with equal dispassion even before mopping up the last scattered Starfleet vessels, then begun swallowing minor states like the Tholian Assembly and the Ferengi Alliance whole.

At first the opening salvos against the Union had nearly destroyed the Resistance; the Cardies had cracked down harder than ever, desperate to get their internal affairs in order and present a solid front to the Borg. For their own part, the resistance cells hadn't been entirely certain yet that changing oppressors was a bad idea. Sure, Union propaganda blared Borg atrocities from every speaker, but it had been doing the same about the Resistance itself for years.

But then Cardassia Prime had fallen. Jagul Dukat had still looked as if he wanted to vomit as he signed the treaty, though just maybe that hadn't been for the terms: full member status for Bajor, full citizenship for Bajorans, and full pardons and military commissions for every militia member willing to turn their arms against the Borg. Granted, it had meant being folded into the organization that she'd spent almost her entire life fighting, and she'd felt a little ill herself. But by that time Kira had seen what the Borg did to their conquests. She couldn't make herself wish that on anyone, even a spoonhead. Except perhaps Dukat, and even then she didn't want to watch. It was certainly an interesting dynamic to have with your commanding officer.

The lone cube closed in on Terok Nor. One ship. One ship against an entire world. And it was probably going to win. "Open fire, all disruptors. Torpedo bays stand by." Her officers-Cardassian, Bajoran, even a few outworlders-obeyed without the slightest hesitation.

They were all Resistance now.

"Gul Odo to Terok Nor. Please respond."

There was no response from the besieged station, not even static. Instead, the bridge filled with a roar of voices: Lower your shields. Surrender your vessels. Your culture will adapt to service ours.

"I'm afraid I'll have to decline that invitation," Odo snarled, wondering why the Borg bothered. Did anyone ever actually take them up on their offer? "Is there any way we can cut through the interference?" The station's weapons ports were still spraying amber fire at the cube, for all the good it was doing, so there was definitely someone still in there.

The detestable noise ceased. "Not on the subspace bands," a Bajoran dalin answered. "But at this distance we can reach them on old-style radio without significant lag time. The Borg aren't bothering with that."

"Fine," Odo snapped. "Gul Odo to Terok Nor. This is the Third Fleet, or what's left of it. We're rounding Jeraddo now. If you know of anything that might make a dent in that cube, now's the time."

Jagul Dukat's face snapped onscreen, surprisingly clear of interference patterns. "...reading you, Odo. As you can undoubtedly see, we are already firing everything we have. If you think more disruptors will make a difference, by all means fire at will."

"Our scans show no significant damage to the cube," stated the Cardassian science officer, bypassing Odo, who simply waved his words on to the jagul. A show of disrespect was the least of Odo's worries at the moment. "Additional disruptors and torpedoes are unlikely to have any real effect."

"Anything less conventional up your sleeve?" Odo inquired wryly, knowing that the question itself would give the Bajorans an opening. As much as the Cardassians needed help, they still had a tendency to bypass their supposed inferiors without any real thought.

"The Borg systems are too decentralized for concentrating our fire to have any effect," Dukat snapped. "We can't knock out their weapons, their propulsion, anything!"

"Odo," Kira said, virtually shoving her way into view, "remember that viral weapon we uploaded into the Cardassian security grid three years ago? Decentralization wouldn't slow that down."

"We have no delivery mechanism!" Dukat seethed, obviously irritated by the reminder of that rather humiliating defeat. "What do you suggest, beaming aboard with a data solid and looking for an interface port?"

Kira grinned ferally. "I have something...less conventional in mind."

Through the Queen, the Collective focused its will. Through Locutus, the Queen. And through First-and-Second of Fifteen, Locutus.

First-and-Second's species had proven unexpectedly resistant to assimilation-very briefly. Then the nanoprobes had discovered the symbionts serving as second neural centers, and the resistance had ended. If anything, after that minor problem was adapted to, the Trill (Species 4707 and 4708) had proven more than usually effective as drones.

Data flowed into First-and-Second's dual cortical nodes, in and then out again. The current center of resistance (designate "Terok Nor") was manifesting no new tactics, although it had been joined by a fleet (new-model vessels, designation unknown, most experiencing damage). Disruptor and torpedo fire pummelled the cube's surface. Minor bits of hull broke away and were replaced. The energy was absorbed and channeled into cube systems, which returned it with interest. Terok Nor was not so successful at adapting to the cube's fire; its shields had fallen to 32% power. The utility of its inhabitants for assimilation was open to question; the Collective's vessels were currently replete, although new tactical cubes were under construction in a number of sectors.

"Disruptor fire is showing unusual modulation," Fourth of Fifteen reported verbally. Additional data channels relayed more specific information through the collective mind. "Energy absorption systems are responding to the modulation." First-and-Second found its primary sensory stub tilting slightly sideways. The modulation pattern was oddly...interesting. Worthy of assimilation. The collective began to channel it into propulsion systems, where it obviously belonged.

"Warning," stated Eighth of Fifteen. "Enemy disruptor fire has been modified to transmit a virus into our systems. Propulsion is experiencing significant function losses." The Collective did not curse, of course. There was, however, something of disgruntlement in its response. Since the disruptor fire projected modulated energy that did no real physical damage to the vessel, it could inflict undesirable patterns on its information relays; since it was a brute-force weapon, it would not be expected to do so. Clearly, the tactic was obvious; the Collective filed it for immediate adaptation and future use.

However, propulsion systems were already suffering from the virus. First-and-Second willed the cube to move forward, but instead it shuddered rapidly sideways and up as if palsied, weaving as it went. "Prepare to purge and re-initialize infected systems," said Third of Fifteen.

"Anomalous spatial disruption in Grid 348," First-and-Second warned, relaying images of intense space-time curvature and heavy verteron emissions.

There came a flash of blinding white light.

The Borg vessel loomed closer. Someone was screaming that the shields were gone.

And then the cube veered away from Bajor and Terok Nor, spinning as its propulsion systems-whatever they were-fired at random.

"Get the shields up!" Dukat didn't believe for a moment that Kira's absurd trick of using a disruptor beam for data transferral would halt the Borg for more than a few minutes. The Bajorans were tenacious, he gave them that, but they were no match for a juggernaut capable of crushing Prime within its grasp. "They'll be back on us the moment they've purged that virus!"

The out-of-control vessel's spinning became a spiral path, arcing up toward the Denorios Belt, as the hive mind regained partial control even faster than Dukat had expected. And then-in a flare of blue energy-it vanished.

"What the kosst...? Where'd they go?" A female Bajoran dal-and what a farce it was to even think that-had pulled herself back up from the floor and was studying the view from a science station.

"Did the ship detonate?" Dukat demanded.

"I don't think so," the dal said, glancing at Kira as she spoke. "Readings indicate some sort of spatial anomaly. If their transwarp drive overloaded, it might have thrown them out of the B'hava'el system."

"There's no triquantum signature," Kira said after a moment. "Whatever that was, it wasn't transwarp."

Odo's visage-now there was a gul one could halfway respect, non-Cardassian or not-appeared on the main viewer. "Sensors aren't picking up the cube anywhere in local space, Jagul. I presume we were responsible for that?"

Dukat shrugged. "So far no one's been able to say. Dal Erim, anything further?"

"High-level verteron readings," the Bajoran said, bafflement on that herding-animal's face. "The sort of field you'd need to stabilize a wormhole, if it were possible."

"We've seen nothing like that from the Borg," Kira pointed out. "Even if their technology was partly responsible, I don't think it was a controlled effect. I wouldn't expect them back any time soon."

"Well," Dukat said sarcastically, "thank the Prophets for small favors."

If the station was up and running by the time the next attack came, that would be a miracle.

Fourth of Fifteen was encased alone in white light.

The voice of the collective still filled Fourth's thoughts, but it was saying impossible things. Contradicting itself. Worse even than mere solitude.

This is not all that you are, said the Collective. Fourth waited for specification, but none came.

"I am Fourth of Fifteen," it said into the emptiness. "We are the Borg."

Erroneous input is detected, the Collective said. All drones stand by. The virus must be responsible. Fourth waited patiently for the errors to be corrected.

Fourth found itself within Unimatrix 1. "It is aggressive," said the Queen. "But it cannot have what it seeks."

The timbre of this "Queen" did not match her authentic voice. "Resistance is futile," Fourth informed the false Queen. "Aggression is irrelevant. We bring perfection to Bajor." It remembered the spatial anomaly. It had been transported...somewhere else.

Fourth was sitting on a small wooden structure near flowing water. Its exoplating was missing. "What is perfection?" asked 35 of 424, an immature drone which Fourth knew to be ensconced in a maturation chamber. 35's exoplating was also absent. It was holding a primitive device for harvesting water organisms.

"The Borg are unity," Fourth responded to the false sensory input, presuming it to be some form of communication. "We are the fusion of flesh and machine, and the harmony of all thought. There is no logic in resisting our advance toward perfection."

Fourth was in the cabin of a resisting vessel. A female humanoid that had escaped assimilation looked up at him, crushed beneath fallen debris. "This is harmony?" it queried.

Fourth requested clarification from the hive mind and heard only garbled noise. "This is the result of resistance," it said at last. "This is the opposite of harmony. Failure to submit to the Borg brings destruction."

"Adversarial," said Locutus from the viewscreen of Enterprise.

"Confrontational," mused First-and-its-previous-host.

It must be destroyed, decreed the Collective.

The Collective destroyed defective drones. Fourth must be defective. There was no weapon at hand with which to destroy itself, however.

"This is not all that you are," the Queen said.

"There is only the Collective," Fourth stated. "What preceded the Collective was not life."

"Preceded?" asked the broken female. "What is 'preceded'?"

Fourth attempted to narrowcast a diagram of space-time to the entity and received no response. "Events proceed in order," it said, finally. "Each event produces more events. The final event is the triumph of the Collective over all non-Borg."

"It is not linear," said unassimilated 35. Fourth considered that.

"No," it responded. "It is not linear." The entity appeared to exist outside conventional space-time. The Borg's utilization of time travel was incomplete. This entity-Species 8387 would be the presumable designation-would be worthy of assimilation. "You will be assimilated," Fourth informed it.

"That is beyond your capabilities," said Seven of Nine, a tertiary adjunct of the distant Unimatrix 01.

"Resistance is futile," it said again. "Your diversity will be added to the whole."

"This is not all that you are," stated {Jake} 35 of 424.

"Resistance," said unassimilated First-and-Second, "is eternal."

The dying female {Jennifer} looked up at him. "You are the Sisko."

"I am Fourth of Fifteen. We are...we are Borg."

"You are the Sisko," repeated a {member of Species...} Cardassian gul.

"That is in the past," Fourth insisted.

"There is no past," said unassimilated Loc- {Captain Picard}.

"What is, is," Curzon Dax stated.

Resistance is futile, chorused the Collective. Fourth could no longer tell whether it was the true Collective or not.

Then the white light swallowed it again.

"Gul Odo to Terok Nor. The anomaly has opened again."

Kira appeared on the screen, harried and sweaty inside her incongruous Cardassian cuirass. "The cube? Did it come back out?"

Odo hesitated, not wanting to seem the bearer of bad news. "It did. However, the anomaly...expelled it. At a very high speed."

"So the wormhole-or whatever it is-spat the cube out?" Odo nodded. "Guess it didn't like the Borg any more than we do."

"I must say I can't blame it," said Odo. "In any case, the cube went to warp almost immediately. I'd like to believe it won't return, but I think we know better than that. And our...unorthodox tactic almost certainly won't work a second time."

"Well," Kira said, with a pained laugh, "we'll just have to try a different unorthodox tactic. The Borg aren't the only ones who know how to adapt."

"I suppose it'll come down to whoever can adapt faster."

Kira opened her mouth, then said nothing. Wearily, she reached out and switched off the viewer.

Odo wondered if he would ever be able to make sense of her.

"It seems these...atemporal entities have taken a liking to you, Fourth of Fifteen." The Queen laid a light hand on the drone's shoulder. "I suppose you will have to go back."

"They will resist," the drone said.

"Of course they will," the Queen responded. "Individuals always do. And always fail. You will need a name, then."

The drone looked slightly puzzled. "My designation is-"

"No longer relevant. You are now reassigned as Speaker for the Collective to Species 8387. We'll call you-"

Impossibly, Fourth of Fifteen interrupted. "I am the Sisko." That had been its previous designation as an individual. It was, therefore, utterly inappropriate. "That is what Species 8387 called me," it added, as if attempting to explain.

The Borg Queen studied it carefully. Despite its unexpected-and dangerous-capacity for limited independent action, the drone was still incapable of lying to her. And as a Speaker, it would have been granted that limited capacity anyway.

"Very well, Sisko of Borg," said the Queen at last. "Assimilate them."


	2. What Shall It Profit?

Hello?" Quark raised a hand to shield his eyes from the light that beamed from the doors to the Divine Treasury. "Is anyone here?"

No one answered. Not a sound, not a peep, even to Ferengi ears. Finally, trembling a little, he stepped forward and gave the right door a shove. It opened, turning smoothly on its hinges. There was no line of shareholders waiting to enter. There were no employees waiting in attendance. The desk of Relk, the Chief Auditor, was vacant.

Quark crept forward. On the desk, covered in dust, lay the two sets of books that recorded his life. With more than a little trepidation, he stretched out a hand to touch one of them, then immediately pulled back. No alarms sounded. No Divine Liquidators appeared.

Well, if it came down to it, if no one was attending the gates, he could always sneak on in. But Quark felt the urge to be certain. No sense in entering to find everyone else enjoying their eternal dividends, only to be thrown out. He opened the books, perused the figures. Black. Red. Black again. He swallowed hard. His ledger ended in a positive balance-of two slips of latinum. Sweet Material River, how was he going to survive on the dividend from that? Well, it was his afterlife-he was presumably beyond mortality-but that didn't mean he couldn't starve forever on the streets of paradise!

But where was everyone?

Trembling, Quark advanced up the celestial stairs, through the hallways. Everything shone with the brilliance of unalloyed latinum, somehow solid and at once liquid, with no need for useless gold to press it between. And everything-from the portraits of Naguses past, to the walls, to the latinum-paved floors-was covered in dust. The latinum frames of the paintings refused to peel away from the walls. The latinum tapestries were fused immovably as well. Not a single slip of latinum could be found on the floor.

At last Quark reached the office of the Divine Nagus himself. He was going to find out just what was happening here. He was going to demand an explanation for this travesty of a paradise! The dust-covered door swung open soundlessly, as if it had been maintained perfectly in every other respect. And at the divine desk of the Divine Nagus...

...She sat, naked as a female should be. Unless you counted her latinum exoplating. Her latinum implants. The Borg Queen's lips pulled away from her teeth in an awful parody of a hew-mon smile. "Quark," she said, her voice a mockery of warmth. "I have been waiting for you."

"You?! Where...what happened to the Divine Nagus? How can you-? This isn't possible! The Rules of Acquisition-"

The Borg Queen shook her head, a throaty chuckle emanating from her...well, her throat. "Rule number one, Quark: she who has the latinum makes the rules. And I believe you can see who has the latinum. All of it." She gestured at the floor, which faded to transparency beneath them.

Beneath her feet, Quark saw the galaxy. Millions and millions of stars, shining as brightly as the walls around him. "My treasury," the Queen said brightly. Immense cubes broke away from the spiral, peeling away into the vast emptiness beyond. "Soon to be greater still."

And now Quark could hear something else. The clanking of chains. Because, somehow, the Divine Treasury had also become the Pit of Eternal Destitution, worked by the slave labor of the Debtors in their Dungeon. Ferengi, Hew-mons, Klingons, Romulans, Tholians, Breen, Kinshaya, species Quark had never seen before in his life. All Borg. All hers. "All but you," the Queen sighed. "You've escaped me. But I suppose it hardly matters."

Because the galaxy, the entire galaxy and all its inhabitants save Quark and his two slips of latinum were the property of the Borg. And no one else owned a thing, not a strip, not a crust of bread. She controlled the entire market, the ultimate monopoly, the whole of the Great Material River, and there was nothing left for him, nothing, nothing, nothing at all...

Quark tried to scream, but all he could hear was the Queen's mocking laughter...

...which became the thrum of a Red Alert.

Quark rolled from his bunk on the Free Trader Pareto, covering his ears against the din. He nearly toppled to the floor; the Orion vessel's artificial gravity was normally set at nearly half a gee more than he was used to, a force the Orions scoffed at as far too light. Beyond that, something was destabilizing the field, tilting the exit portal rapidly upwards.

"What's happening?" he shrieked, dashing into the passageway. Well, shambling into it, anyway; it was all he could do for the moment to keep his feet.

"We're turning around. We have to get back to warp speed!" Even Runge, an Orion with a build like a giant vazhe-hound, stumbled as the ship struggled to re-orient itself, its inertial dampers unable to keep up with the force of the snap-turn the Pareto was trying to execute.

"But the weapons-?" Really, why even ask the question? Quark had the lobes to recognize what was happening. There weren't going to be any guns run on this trip. But still... "The Breen-"

"The Breen are gone!" Runge lamented. He fumbled at the controls of a viewscreen set into the wall, switching the current schematic for a tactical view of local space. Shattered hulks of a dozen Breen cruisers drifted lazily through the asteroid field, still venting frozen atmospheric crystals. From among them there loomed a pair of Borg cubes, closing lazily on the Pareto.

"Terok Nor," Quark breathed. "We have to get back to Terok Nor." And ideally, lose the cubes in the process, or Jagul Dukat would kill them if the Borg didn't get them first.

"Trust Captain Morn," Runge rumbled. Morn would be on the bridge right now, barking orders left and right, firing everything he had at the cubes and planning an evasive course back to safe port. Quark knew all that, and felt no better.

Resistance is futile, growled a voice from the speakers, overriding the internal communications. Cease fire and surrender to the Borg. You will be assimilated. You will help us bring order to the galaxy.

"Like frinx I will, you stinking communists," Quark snarled. He'd surrender to the Borg when he was dead. No, not even then.

Quark thought he was probably the last free Ferengi in the galaxy. He intended to stay that way.

"Borg ship entering firing range," Glinn Leeta, at weapons, reported tensely. "Still no shields. Beam weapons...not active."

Gul Kira tried not to swallow visibly. If the Borg weren't powering weapons, they must have something worse in mind. Perhaps they were about to beam straight through Terok Nor's shields and start assimilating-or massacring-its crew. Perhaps they would transmit a computer virus to turn the station itself against her. Perhaps...

"The Borg are hailing us," said Dal Shakaar.

"Hailing?" The Borg didn't bother with greeting messages. "Run it through the virus scanners." Kira studied the curious octahedral design. It was one of the rarer known types of Borg vessel, though loosely consistent with the Collective's apparent fondness for geometric shapes. Low weapons capability. Sometimes reported hanging in the rear during battle.

"No data weapons detectable," reported Glinn Haghem. "It seems to be a simple voice message."

"Okay." Kira inhaled deeply. "Be ready to pull the plug at the first sign of malfunction. And put it through."

Are you in command of this station? roared the voice of the Borg.

Her eyes opened wider. Since when did the Borg acknowledge anyone else's command? "Yes." Jagul Dukat, of course, was on the station and in command of all Union operations in the Bajoran system, but there was operational security to consider. "What's it to you?"

"Well," responded a fairly high-pitched Cardassian voice, "I'm here to offer my surrender."

Dukat seized the station's physician by the throat. "If I were incapacitated by my illness, would I have the strength to do this?"

The Bajoran doctor, unable to speak, shook his head slightly, and Dukat released him. "If you insist, Jagul, I will put him through. But I must protest. Should the Borg really know that you're not well?"

It was a duplicitous rationale-clearly the real problem was his foolish notion that Dukat shouldn't strain himself-but because it showed an admirable concern for security Dukat let it pass with a shrug. "The Borg consider us all equally weak. I don't believe it matters if they know I have one of your world's detestable influenzas. Open the channel."

On the small screen beside the biobed appeared a face. "Jagul Dukat. I congratulate you on your promotion, and admit my dismay that your superiors have fared so poorly."

It was all Dukat could do not to bring his fist down on the screen. "Shek'ral of Borg. How dare you show me your face, you murderous coward? I was there when you laid waste to Cardassia Prime! I saw your filthy drones infest our capital and transform our people into slaves. Prepare to be destroyed, you-"

"I am prepared," the "Speaker to the Cardassian Union" said, in a soft, resigned hiss that cut through Dukat's rage. "But until I face my trial as an enemy of the Union, I prefer that you address me as Agent Garak of the Obsidian Order."

They faced him together, through the cell door. With the Borg's capacity to walk straight through virtually all force-fields, most cells now had physical doors as well. In Kira's opinion, it was a long-needed upgrade anyway; far too many power outages had led to prison breaks when they could least be afforded. She'd organized a couple herself.

"Tell me why I should trust you, 'Agent Garak'." Dukat seemed unable to stop pacing, perhaps because it allowed him to look away from the traitor's face. Every time their eyes met, Dukat's jaw tightened in fury.

"You shouldn't," Garak replied. "You should not take a single word I say on faith. But I guarantee you confirmation within three standard Cardassian days. The Borg are about to launch a dual assault on Grennokar and Bajor."

"Why does it matter?" Kira wanted to know. "The Borg launch pinprick attacks all the time, but there's no strategic value to either world. Grennokar's nothing but a prison, and we're a backwater world that happens to be on their expansion front."

"On the contrary," said Garak, "Grennokar is also a research facility. As you know very well, unless Cardassian military policy has remained more sensible than I anticipate. It may have been necessary to integrate you into the military, but-"

"Don't finish that remark," Dukat snapped. "Regardless of any shortcomings Bajorans in general may have, the gul is a fine officer, worthy of far more respect than you deserve. Very well, you know about Grennokar. Why Bajor?"

Garak sighed and tilted his head slightly. "Two reasons. First, because of the wormhole."

"Wormhole?" Kira asked. There had been a transient spatial anomaly during the last Borg attack, but no one had yet had time or resources to send out more than automated probes.

"There is a wormhole, in this system, in the Denorios Belt. The Borg encountered it during their most recent skirmish in this system-and I assure you, it was nothing more than a skirmish to them, regardless of what it may have been to you. The cube's readings indicated that it was stable-a most unprecedented find in itself-but even more than that, inhabited. Even if its denizens prove resistant to assimilation-as I think may be likely for some time-it could become a pathway for the Borg to new areas of the galaxy. You must surely have seen it open. I know that the station's sensors were still operative."

"You know," Dukat said flatly.

"In a manner of speaking," said Garak, "a part of me was here."

"And the other reason?" An inhabited wormhole? Kira suspected this "intelligence" was rubbish. Though if the Borg were trying to conduct a disinformation campaign, it was certainly a new tactic for them.

"The wormhole's readings are suspiciously similar to artifacts the Borg are aware of," Garak responded, "through me, which fact I deeply regret. Of those artifacts, three have been lost, three are being studied on Grennokar, and three are present here on Bajor. They have unusual energetic properties, which I assure you Cardassian scientists were astonished to find present in mere religious artifacts."

"The Orbs." Kira tried, and failed utterly, to keep the shock from her voice. "Prophets. The Borg want the Orbs?" But there was no way-it was impossible that the Orbs could give the Borg any advantage. They were conduits for the will of the Prophets; surely the Prophets would never cooperate, and could not be forced. "Wait-you said the wormhole was inhabited? By what?"

Garak shrugged. "Some form of energy beings. The Borg were interested in their apparent...acausal nature, which suggested they have control of time superior to that of the Collective. Gul, are you well?"

Kira drew her hand back from the door, forcing herself to stand up straight. "Yes, I...I'm fine. I...Dukat, what do we know about his neural implant?"

"The Obsidian Order assured Central Command that it would guarantee assimilated agents of the Obsidian Order were free of Borg control," Dukat growled. "Clearly, they were either lying, or mistaken."

"The former," Garak said weakly. "The implants were never intended to begin to function immediately. The Order believed that the Collective consciousness would become aware of them and quickly adapt. We were sleepers, intended to gather knowledge of Borg operations for several years before awaking, in case the Borg consciousness was more partitioned than it appeared."

"But you said you were guilty of Shek'ral's crimes," Kira noted. "If you were just another slave..." She couldn't finish. Shek'ral's forces had wrought slaughter on a level she couldn't even begin to imagine. And while it had, admittedly, been against her enemy-had even freed Bajor, after a fashion-any good the Borg had done her had been temporary and utterly incidental. The last thing she could bring herself to offer would be forgiveness.

"I am guilty," Garak insisted. "I was weak. I was a disgrace to the Order, and I deserve to face Cardassian justice. What I've seen...what I've done..." His face turned from her, his crystalline ocular implant unable to hide the anguish in his expression. " I was never your friend, Jagul Dukat, let alone your family, but in the Union's current state, all Cardassians must consider themselves brothers. Think of this as my rite of shri-tal, Dukat. I beg you not to ignore the secrets I offer, or to refuse me death."

Dukat was silent for a long moment. Finally..."Very well," he said, and turned away.

"Quark, I was under the impression that you were going to return with weapons." Gul Odo glared down at him uncompromisingly.

"I was! Breen type-9 disruptors! The Borg haven't-hadn't managed to adapt to them. Well, until now. But we couldn't have known that!"

"You're just lucky our scans didn't detect any Borg nanomachines lurking in your ridiculous little vessel. As it is, I'm expecting that Jagul Dukat will send word for it to be impounded any moment now."

"Impounded!"

"For spare parts and fuel. You clearly won't be running any more guns from Breen space." Why couldn't Odo at least make the attempt to show an expression or two? Even that smooth face ought to be able to give away a little of his intentions. He was a shapeshifter, for crying out loud! Why would his face be static?

"Well, the Borg haven't conquered the entire galaxy yet! The Cardassians aren't the only resistance movement left. There's-"

"The Romulans are barely hanging onto their core worlds," Odo said, raising one finger. "The Kinshaya are on the far side of what used to be Klingon space, with the Borg between them and us. If they're even still out there, which we don't know for certain." A second finger. "And the Orion Syndicate's lost its entire territory. Granted that its strength was always in its ships, not its planets, those ships still need to be refueled and repaired somewhere." A third finger, and the rest of Odo's hand was suddenly smooth. "Those are the last surviving powers in local space, Quark. So unless you intend to leave the quadrant, we don't have any further use for smugglers."

"Well then, what am I supposed to do?" Quark had a sudden intuition that Odo was trying to get him to enlist in the Union military. He wasn't a soldier, though, just a merchant. What use would he be in one of those ridiculous uniforms? But any moment now the gul would suggest...

"I haven't the slightest notion," said Odo.

"Kai..."

"Winn," said the Kai wearily. "Gul, please simply call me Winn. Or better, Adami. Surely we're on friendly enough terms for that, Nerys."

"I'm not here as a Union soldier," Kira said firmly. "I'm here as a Bajoran having a crisis of faith, and you're the Kai, no matter what you may think ought to be true."

Winn Adami shook herself a little and settled the mantle across her shoulders. "All right, child," she said, "tell me what troubles you."

"What do you know about Trakor's third prophecy?"

"The prophecy of the Emissary?" The Kai managed to rouse herself a little. "Why? Have you learned anything I should know?"

"First, explain it to me. Please, and then I'll tell you."

"Well, Trakor says that the Prophets will call to the Emissary, and the Emissary will open the Temple's gates and bring a new era to Bajor. All this is common knowledge, child. But if you're suggesting that the Emissary may be about to come-if you've learned anything from your military connections-" Winn hoped she was conveying something of the hope she felt, in her eyes, in her voice. "-Bajor could certainly use a new era about now."

"No," Kira said bitterly. "No, I don't think it could."

"I don't understand."

"The Borg cube that attacked Terok Nor three days ago," Kira explained, "was driven off with a computer virus we managed to upload. It entered a spatial anomaly in the Denorios Belt." Where the Celestial Temple-or its manifestation, at least-was thought to reside. "Today a Cardassian sleeper agent returned from the Borg. He claims that the anomaly was an inhabited wormhole. Inhabited by 'atemporal energy beings'. And that the energy readings inside it were consistent with the readings from an Orb of the Prophets."

Winn stood there, her mind swirling, unable to speak. At last, she found something to say. "If the Temple truly opened, then the Emissary must have come to us."

"Kai, the Temple opened to the Borg."

"You know as well as I, Nerys, that the individual drones are nothing more than slaves, as we were slaves not so long ago. Any one of them might be the Emissary."

Kira looked down, closing her eyes. "If the Emissary's been assimilated, Kai, then surely that would mean...that the Borg are stronger than the Prophets. Or worse. That the Prophets are..." She struggled to finish. "...are collaborating with the Borg." Tears began to streak down her face. "I know. It's blasphemous. But what am I supposed to believe?"

Winn put her hand to Kira's chin, pulling it gently upward. "Believe in the Prophets, child." Then she remembered. "Trakor's prophecy also says that the Prophets will give life back to the Emissary. Consider the possibility that the Borg are not beyond help. If the Prophets free the Emissary, would that not fulfill Trakor's words? And if the Emissary, why the Emissary alone?"

"It sounds like a nice dream, your Holiness. But it's been a long time since I dared to believe in dreams. The Cardassian Occupation, we could fight. We could even win, in a sense. The Borg...they take your body, and your mind, and your soul. There's nothing left to fight back with. Once they have you, you're gone. You don't even exist any more, except as their tool."

"Nerys." Winn spoke the name sharply, trying to pull her from this morass of despair. "When I taught children in my youth, when I first had to explain to them about the nature of the Pah-wraiths, I told them this: above all, remember that the Pah-wraiths cannot tear you away from the Prophets' love. Only you, of your own will, can turn yourself away from the Prophets, and even then they will not readily let you go. Do you really mean to say you believe that the Borg-powerful beings, yes, but merely of this physical, temporal plane-are a more terrible enemy than they? That mere nanomachines can rip you away from the Prophets and destroy your essence? Because if that is true, many of the texts need rewriting, my child."

At last Kira looked up, struggling to find steel in her backbone again. "You're right," she said without conviction. "I have to keep faith. I have to...believe that there's still hope. Even if only in death."

"Bring me back to the station with you," said Winn Adami. "If you've been shaken by this, child, then many others are in need of help as well, because your pagh is the strongest I have known. Help me offer them strength, Nerys." In this way, she was certain, Kira would find her own strength again as well.

"All right," Kira said. "I will."

Quark found himself sitting on the floor down by the docking bays. His days as the chief negotiator for the Pareto were over, the ship confiscated by the Cardassian military. So much for those two strips. When he'd first come here to the station, there'd been a variety of businesses thriving on the Promenade-even a few that catered to Bajorans. Now there wasn't even a barber shop. The basic vital services-food and water, mostly, and the simplest of grooming and cleaning supplies-all came from the Replimat. All the other stores had been shuttered or converted into barracks. The Bajoran Temple, ramshackle though it seemed, was doing a thriving business still-but apparently the local gods didn't ask for anything material. More fool they.

The station needed a bar. Or a spa, or something. Somewhere people could pour out their troubles and steal a moment of relaxation. But without operating capital, without a source of goods to sell, Quark just wasn't going to be able to provide that place.

A few doors down, one of the airlocks cycled open, and Gul Kira emerged leading an older Bajoran female in fancy clothes. Quark was supposed to stand up and salute. He didn't have it in him. Let her toss him out the airlock; it was better than ending up a drone. Or broke. Kira gave him a piercing glance, then decided to ignore him and hurry off.

"Hello there." Quark looked up; the older female had stopped to crouch beside him. "I can't say I've seen your species before, but if you were a Bajoran or a Cardassian, I would believe that you had given up hope." From her robes, she was probably some sort of religious official. They were the only civilians still bothering to dress up.

"His name's Quark," Kira snapped. "He's Ferengi, and if you're not careful he'll try to sell you grain futures or Preserver technology or something. He's a scheming lowlife who's run out of marks, that's all."

"And is that observation based on personal knowledge, child, or simply on his species?"

Frinx, this female was naive. This would be the perfect opportunity to go into a spiel about how galactic society discriminated against the Ferengi by assuming they were all swindlers. Quark considered his options and settled back into his funk. What was he going to do, buy her silly hat and sell it, no doubt at a loss?

"I'm Winn Adami, Quark. May I?" She reached out towards his left ear.

"If I'd known Bajoran religion offered free oo-mox," Quark managed to quip, "I'd have converted years ago." Kira looked away in disgust.

Winn, however, didn't seem to understand his comment. She shrugged and gripped the lowest lobe of his ear, much too roughly for him to get any enjoyment out of it. Well, maybe she just needed practice. "Your pagh is stronger than you realize, Quark," she said, and let go.

Pagh? That was the Bajoran word for "soul", wasn't it? "That'd be a more convincing line if you were the most powerful telepath in the galaxy," Quark said, shaking his head. "Not many species can read a Ferengi mind. I doubt you're an exception."

Winn raised a hand, cutting off Kira's comment about Ferengi not having minds to read. "I may not have seen a Ferengi before, but I remember hearing that the Ferengi Alliance had been destroyed by the Borg. Yet here you are, alive and unassimilated."

"Here I am."

"Then what makes you think I need to be a telepath to know you have a strong pagh? You haven't been sitting here alone for the entire three years since your nation was assimilated, Quark. You found it in yourself to go on."

"That was then, Ms. Winn. This is now. I just came back from seeing the Breen get wiped off the galactograph, only to have my ship stolen out from under me for spare parts." He was getting really tired of this conversation.

Winn seized him by the left arm. "Get up, Quark, and come with me. Please. I have a story to tell you, and my joints don't like this position very much. Kira, please-give me a hand with him."

Quark stopped fighting her. "All right, all right!" It was less effort that way. He clambered to his feet.

"I assumed you meant you were here for the Bajorans, Adami," Kira said grumpily. "Not for displaced merchants."

"I am here to do whatever good I can," Winn replied. "Aiding my own people doesn't require that I ignore others in need. Honestly, I'm disappointed in your attitude."

Chastened, Kira nodded. Her tone didn't change, though. "Quark, this is Kai Winn, the leader of all Bajor's faithful, and you should treat her with a little respect. If I hear that you've sold her a batch of self-sealing stem bolts..."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Quark deadpanned. He didn't have any stem bolts, and didn't feel remotely confident in his ability to pretend he did.

"I don't believe I dismissed you, child," Winn said sharply, "so unless you must return to duty, perhaps you should come with me and Quark. To ensure he doesn't cheat me."

Kira sighed.

"To begin with, Quark, I am not Kai."

"But she just said you were-"

"My predecessor in office was Opaka Sulan," Winn said. "She was one of the negotiators who convinced the Cardassians that it was more important to fight the Borg than to keep trying to pacify Bajor. After the treaty was signed, she was asked to retrieve the Orbs-our most sacred objects, which the Cardassians had taken from us save one. Her transport vessel was attacked, and she gave her life-perhaps in death, perhaps assimilation-to prevent the Borg from taking the Orb of Destiny. That's why three Orbs are still in Cardassian hands; most of the Vedek Council believes they're safer remaining where they are."

"They sound really valuable," Quark said without thinking.

Kira glared at him, but the Kai merely nodded. "More valuable than anyone can imagine. And well out of your price range, I'm afraid, especially once you've accounted for the security you'd need to keep one." Maybe she could read his mind.

They emerged onto the dilapidated Promenade. The crowds that had filled it once were gone; all that remained was a scattering of low-level soldiers hurrying to or from a posting, plus the odd technician here and there. Winn gestured to the one remaining public door.

"You really think I should go in there? I mean, it's a Bajoran place, right?" Unguarded comment aside, Quark knew better than to risk insulting anyone's religion. You lost customers that way.

"The Prophets are of Bajor," said the Kai. "But they mean no harm to anyone who means no harm to our world. And while they would never demand any outsider's allegiance, neither would they begrudge you guidance, I think, if you asked it."

Quark shrugged and gestured for her to go on ahead. The Temple was dark save for candles, but in a way that was probably intended to be warm and cozy, though it didn't fit so well on an average-sized Ferengi. A dozen Bajorans-and even one Cardassian in the shadows-were praying quietly in alcoves. He waited a little impatiently while Winn and Kira lit candles of their own.

Winn ended her brief prayer first, taking him a little way aside while Kira continued mumbling under her breath. "As I was saying," she confided very softly, "after the loss of Kai Opaka, the vedeks gathered to choose a new leader, and I was delighted to hear that my name was under consideration. I'd desired all my life to lead Bajor; I thought I knew the Prophets and their wisdom. I wasn't among the most favored candidates, but in the end I was chosen nonetheless."

"You don't seem like such a bad choice," Quark offered sincerely. Long-winded, but pleasant enough.

"Only after assuming office did I learn that the Cardassians had feared the possibility of a new kai who would resume the fight against them. Their negotiators judged it was less costly to offer economic concessions in exchange for a member of an order they believed had collaborated with the Occupation. My order. They weren't entirely correct-we had made some efforts at quiet subversion-but plainly we had accomplished...so little. What I had thought was my triumph was my greatest shame, Quark. I don't deserve to be the kai. I never have, and doubtless never will."

"I have to admit I don't understand Bajoran religious politics," he said, keeping his volume even with hers. "The Cardassians got what they wanted, you got what you wanted, even Bajor got what it wanted, or most of it. None of that would've been anything shameful on...on Ferenginar." When there was anything on Ferenginar but Borg, anyway.

"But did the Prophets get what They wanted?"

"If they wanted something, they should've sent someone to represent their interests," Quark said sharply, and immediately regretted it. A Bajoran who'd just lit a candle shot him an irritated look.

Winn closed her eyes for a moment-but not in exasperation, he realized; she was upset about something else. "Perhaps," she said eventually. "I know only that I'm not worthy of this position. And whenever I say as much, I'm congratulated for my humility."

"You shouldn't be talking about it in here," Kira said from behind her. Quark expected the Kai to jump out of her skin, but she only stiffened slightly. "But I'll tell you again, Adami. Maybe-just maybe-the knowledge that you're not worthy makes you worthy."

Winn gave Quark a what-can-you-do-with-that? shrug. "If you don't mind, I'd like to complete my prayers," she said. "Quark, remember that we are all here, together, for a reason, even if it isn't yet clear what that reason is. I hope that it won't seem condescending if I include you in those prayers?"

Quark considered. "Sure, why not? Come to think of it...are those candles free?" Kira rolled her eyes.

Kai Winn just raised an eyebrow and handed him one.


	3. Darkness Upon the Deep

The Klingon homeworld was waste and void, and the consciousness of the Borg brooded over the chaos that was the Boneyard of Qo'noS.

The Borg did not need reminders. At least, not the hive mind itself. But at some remaining deep level, the individual minds of at least some of its drones still remained active, struggling against what they illogically regarded as a horrifying fate.

The Borg had come to Qo'noS under such heavy fire that any ordinary conqueror would have broken and run. But the Borg had not come for conquest of any sort that Species 5008 understood.

Species 5008 had fought back with disruptor cannons and photon torpedoes, and to these the Borg had adapted in a matter of hours. But drones and ships alike were more vulnerable to brute force and blades, and when Species 5008 had discovered this, astonishingly, they had adapted. They had fought back, very literally, with sticks and stones.

The first cube to approach the planet itself was smashed abruptly by a hurtling mass that its sensors had no time to analyze. The ships behind it, however, recognized it as an asteroidal chunk. It had been ripped from the gravitational hold of the shattered moon of Praxis by tractor beam and hurled at 60% of the speed of light by the same mechanism.

Species 5008 possessed a superior tactical intelligence as well as great strength and fortitude. The Borg consciousness, insofar as it was capable of doing so, rejoiced.

By this time the Empire was in near-total disarray. Its three remaining fleets were deployed to protect the homeworld, however. Dozens of cubes fell victim to improvised mass drivers before the Collective could adapt. The battle lasted for days, longer than any single planet had survived in recent memory. The strategy, however, held a fatal weakness: there was only so much mass to drive. Battlecruisers and birds-of-prey slammed the Borg vessels with hunks of rock and ice until they cleared a vast volume of space or exhausted their engines' energy capacity. At the last they hurled themselves with nearly as much effect.

And still the Borg drove on.

The hive mind heard Chancellor Duras make one final speech over the planetary network, promising that this day the entire Klingon people would storm Sto-Vo-Kor. His meaning, initially obscure, soon became apparent. The planet itself had been studded with tractor emplacements. As the Borg fleet descended upon Qo'noS, the rocky ball beneath them began to tear itself apart. Entire islands and cities rose into space and smashed themselves against the cubes. Where the Borg managed to beam some individuals into rear cubes, the survivors fought to the death with bladed weapons, simple clubs, or even their own hands. At the end of the battle, less than .0001% of the population of Qo'noS had been assimilated, a few thousands compared to the billions that had walked its streets.

At the end of the battle, however, the Borg were still victorious. And the cubeships had devised shields that could protect against any impact short of the concentrated mass of a planet over a few square kilometers. The drones were not so protected, but drones, after all, were cheap. If necessary, they could be protected, and that was all that mattered.

As for Sto-Vo-Kor...it was a lie. The only immortality was the memory of the Collective. If Species 5008 truly wanted to deny itself immortality, well...that was mildly unfortunate but within parameters. So be it.

What remained of the individual minds of the drones quailed under the weight of the hive mind's certainty. There could be no victory against the Collective, not even the pyrrhic victory of death.

And yet Sisko of Borg found himself troubled.

"We need to mount an expedition through the wormhole."

Jagul Dukat's eyes widened with astonishment. "You? With all due respect, Kai Winn, if I thought there was a military purpose to such an excursion, I'd send my own people, not a Bajoran religious official and a destitute Ferengi merchant. And without such a purpose, I can't spare a ship, not even a shuttlepod."

"Look," the Ferengi protested, "a wormhole has to go somewhere, right? It can't lead to more Borg space or they'd know about it already. So whoever is on the other side is still free of the Collective! They can help us!"

"Unless they're primitives with stone knives," Dukat pointed out. "Or unless it simply leads to intergalactic space. Or..."

"Jagul," the Bajoran implored, "Quark's vessel, the Pareto, hasn't been dismantled yet because you don't have the manpower. It's not heavily armed, so it's no use to you as it is. Surely you can risk one worthless vessel in the hopes of finding more allies against the Borg. Think it through."

Dukat considered. "Fine. Neither of you are any real use to the war effort anyway." The Kai grimaced, but he was beyond catering to Bajoran religious whims even for morale's sake. "Take the Pareto and get out of my sight."

"That didn't go so well as it might have," Winn Adami sighed as they made their way to the docking ring.

Quark shook his head. "You don't understand negotiation very well, Kai. We wanted a ship. We got a ship." He scratched idly at a lower left lobe. "Dukat's never going to be happy with us, so his goodwill wasn't on the table to begin with. Now tell me why we wanted a ship."

"The Prophets are always with us, Quark, but the Celestial Temple is their home. There may or may not be anyone on the other side of the wormhole, but we can always find them within."

"But if this Emissary of theirs is Borg," Quark wondered, "why would they help us?"

"I don't believe for a moment that the hive itself is the Emissary. He is one man who has been taken by them. The Prophets will want him freed."

"You sure don't ask for much." Quark tapped the airlock controls and watched it cycle. "Nobody's ever escaped the Collective, you realize?"

"Not so. Agent Garak-"

"-had an Obsidian Order implant when he was assimilated. And he's still full of Borg hardware, so if it ever shuts down he'll be right back where he was. I personally don't think he should be on the station at all, not even for dismantling. He's the fellow who conquered Cardassia Prime, isn't he?"

The Kai declined to answer beyond a simple sigh. "I suppose we should call up the rest of your crew?"

"I'll comm for Captain Morn. I figure I'll just tell him we're looking for help on the other side of the wormhole. No need to babble about contacting the Bajoran gods, right?"

Kai Winn folded her arms. "If that is what your pagh-tem-far suggests."

"My what?" Quark brushed an earlobe unconsciously. "Ponn farr? I don't-"

"The vision you described to me, Quark. A sacred vision from the Prophets."

"Look, that was a dream. The only visions Ferengi have...had...are of gold-pressed latinum."

The corner of Winn's mouth quirked upward faintly. A tell like that was bad for business. No negotiating skills. "From what I have heard, latinum doesn't need to be pressed in gold in the Divine Treasury."

Quark groaned. "Look, Kai, I've met a lot of different species and dealt with all kinds of cultures, but I have yet to meet anyone else who takes Ferengi religion seriously. I know most faiths don't respect profit, but could you at least refrain from mocking a guy whose entire civilization is dead?"

The Kai gave him a stuffy smile. "Should I not take your faith seriously? You do, after all. Before the Occupation, Bajor and Cardassia shared a certain amount of...cultural exchange. Many Bajorans believed that Oralius-the old god of Cardassia-was real, and benevolent, if alien to us. Why should I not assume the same of the Divine Exchequer?"

"Well," Quark spluttered, "Er, because everyone else always used to tell us greed was evil?"

"I've always wondered about that, Quark. It seems like such an odd value. But then, not even Federation universal translators worked perfectly, did they?" The Kai palmed open a turbolift. "Tell me, what do you think of asecticism?"

"I've never understood it." Quark shook his head vigorously. "I mean, if it's good to give up material things, then it always seemed like you'd be doing other people a favor by taking theirs. But no one else ever saw it that way. Most people want stuff. I give them stuff they want, they give me stuff I want, everyone is that much happier. Net increase in the happiness of the universe is good, right? Not bad?"

"Is that the doctrine of the Great Material River?"

"Well, the meaning of it, right. The River carries off what you've got too much of and deposits what you need in return. It's all kind of metaphorical. It really takes people to do that, you know."

"That's not what I'd call 'greed', Quark. The profit motive, yes. But not greed."

Quark made a mockery of an appalled gasp. "You mean...you're saying we've been the victims of a mistranslation? All this time?"

"I'm not that much of a fool, Quark." The Kai shook her head sadly. "From the actual records I've seen of dealing with Ferengi, I'd guess that most of your people learned to take shortcuts to profit. You tried to come out ahead without providing any real value to others. It's the reverse of your disdain for ascecticism, Quark. Was it really a requirement of Ferengi faith to bankrupt others? To send everyone else to the Vault of Eternal Destitution?"

"If it was like that," Quark said defensively, "we've sure paid the price, haven't we?" The female did have a point, he supposed. He'd never meant it that way. No one else even believed in the Vault of Eternal Destitution!

"Still, it seems to me that there was a core of nobility to Ferengi ethics, Quark. Even if it did corrode, in time."

The turbolift door cycled open. "So what's it matter, anyway? What's it have to do with the Prophets?" Quark stomped out, a little peeved, in the direction of his ship.

"Just this, Quark. The Borg have the Emissary. The Prophets want him back. What do you think they might be willing to give for his safe return?"

Quark halted in mid-stomp. "One messiah-figure, slightly used?" He ran through some hypothetical figures in his head. "I don't know. What kind of lobes do the Prophets have for business?"

"I couldn't tell you, Quark." But the Kai pointed toward his ship. "I suggest we find out."

"I heard that you were up for a promotion." Kira smiled at Odo. The shapeshifter stared glumly back. "You command a whole fleet now. You should be Jagul Odo, not just Gul."

"I'm in command because my predecessor failed," Odo muttered, staring at his drink as if he wished it were real and could get him drunk. "The Borg assimilated him and his entire vessel. The same as they've assimilated most of the quadrant. The same as they're going to assimilate the Union, before long. So what does a promotion matter?"

"It matters to you. And it matters to morale." Kira struggled to hold her smile steady. "Your soldiers look to you to give them courage, Odo. You have to show them you haven't given up."

"Even though the Borg have opened the Celestial Temple?"

She blinked. "Where did you hear about that?"

"I've been talking to Elim. The Borg, apparently, are taking your Prophets very seriously. Have every intent of assimilating them too, it seems."

"Well, they're going to fail!" Kira cycled in an instant from dismay through amused disbelief to righteous anger. "The Borg are mortal, Odo. Just like the rest of us. They can't defeat the Prophets." The idea was absurd. Blasphemous. "They can't." She had to keep believing that.

Odo's frown deepened. "I don't know whether I believe there is anything the Borg can't do, Nerys."

Kira leaned forward across the table and lowered her voice. "Odo, that's skirting close to treason. You can't let the troops hear that. You can't just say we're going to lose the war, let's give up. Do you have any idea what the Borg do?"

"I know exactly what the Borg do, Gul. I know what they did to Jagul Kronn, and I know what they will certainly do to me. An unknown lifeform with unprecedented capabilities? I'll be lucky to end up a drone, as opposed to an eternal experimental subject." Odo leaned forward as well, till their faces were nearly in contact. "I have no intention of surrender. But you said it yourself. The Cardassians are the resisting force, now, and the Borg the occupiers. Tell me, Gul, what progress did the Bajoran Resistance make in the decades that the Occupation lasted? Could we have ever gotten rid of Cardassia if the Borg hadn't invaded? Our odds are no better now."

"Then we have to find a way to even the odds."

Odo sneered. "Name one, Nerys. If the Borg can assimilate incorporeal energy beings-beings who might as well be gods, if they aren't-what can we possibly do that will hold them off? Whose aid is there to ask for? What weapon can we field against them? What are you going to do, free the Pah-Wraiths and beg them for help?"

Kira shuddered. "Better to lose to the Borg. But there's something. There has to be. There are free species in the galaxy still."

"For now." Odo stood up. "But how long will that last?"

"Long enough," Kira said, stubbornly keeping her seat. She took a drink of kanar, trying not to spit the vile beverage out. Odo shrugged and walked away.

Free the Pah-Wraiths? Now that would take real insanity. Not even the Borg could be...Of course, if the Prophets really chose to collaborate with the Borg...Insanity. It was insanity talking. But if...?

No. No. Never.

She had to keep faith.

The Pareto shuddered faintly as it re-entered normal space. Quark could feel a dozen pairs of eyes on him. It was his show, Captain Morn had told him. He was the negotiator. He almost wished the Prophets had spoken during the trip, but they were apparently out to lunch.

"Speak," Kai Winn urged him.

"Er...ah...right. We need to broadcast a message. Unless there's some ship in sensor range we can talk to?"

Morn peered at him. "What message would you send?"

"Um, I dunno, maybe 'Cybernetic zombies are going to eat your brains unless you come help us while there's still time'?" Actually, he had been looking through a cache of old holodramas, trying to find something suitably...dramatic. Nothing so far.

"I have to say, Quark, that's pretty alarming." Moogie shrugged at him. Moogie? Quark's mother wasn't on the ship! She'd been assimilated along with the rest of Ferenginar.

"Um, brother," Rom mumbled, "the Borg have the Sisko. We'd really like him back."

"The...the what? Who are you?"

Suddenly Quark was on a gangway above a vast abyss. Horrendous clanking noises echoed in his ears, like the chains of an immense gang of slaves. "Take a guess," a dark-skinned male Borg intoned.

"Use your intution," the Borg Queen whispered in his ear.

"Or didn't you come to make us an offer?" Gul Kira said bluntly. They were all in Ops again.

"You're the...the...look," Quark answered, as bluntly as Kira, "you want the Emissary, we need some help already. The Bajorans worship you. You must have something on hand. Pure anti-proton death rays? Neutronium armor? Hold off the Borg for us, and we'll find some way to get your Emissary back." The Sisko? Must be a translation failure. Quark didn't recognize that word, and he knew Bajoran pretty well by now.

Jagul Dukat leaned forward into Quark's face. "The wormhole is our domain. Our Temple. We cannot simply leave it."

"Then how did you send the Orbs?" Quark spun 'round, searching for someone reasonable to talk to. "You have to have some kind of access. Is this some sort of cosmic noninterference thing? Because the Borg aren't going to respect that, you know."

"So you're looking for help?" Odo's gravelly voice grated in Quark's ears. "There is help we can give. But it will require...time."

Quark was standing on Ferenginar, as it had been. A hard rain, slightly acidic, pounded on his head. "And don't tell me we don't understand time!" Grand Nagus Zek shouted at him. "We don't, you know! But you don't have to remind us."

Quark wiped rainwater frantically out of his eyes. A guy could drown in rain like this. "Are you going to help us or not?"

"In time," said a slender, blond woman with odd, thick folds around her pointed ears. "And out of it."

The Pareto shuddered faintly as it re-entered normal space. Quark could feel a dozen pairs of eyes on him. It was his show, Captain Morn had told him. He was the negotiator.

"Whoa whoa whoa! Is this the other side of the wormhole or are we still inside?" Quark twisted wildly around. Everyone stared at him, eyes wide.

"We're out of the wormhole," said Horg, the Orion navigator. "What? What's wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong," Kai Winn said, smiling faintly. "Did they speak to you?"

"They offered to help," Quark muttered. "I think. It was hard to get anything out of them. They don't seem to understand half of what I say. Some omniscient beings they are!"

"Perhaps it was you who didn't understand," the Kai said with a shrug. "Dealing with beings outside of linear time...I imagine it can be disorienting."

"You bet it was disorienting." Quark looked around. The Orions were watching him. The Kai was watching him. Captain Morn was watching him. "Well, if we're on the other side of the wormhole, let's get on with the other part of the mission. Open me a channel?" Horg flipped a couple of switches.

Quark took a deep breath. There'd been this one ancient holoprogram about evil cyborgs...

"My name is Quark," he intoned dramatically. "And if you can hear me...you are the resistance."

"Lower your defenses. Surrender to the Borg. You have resisted with honor, but all things come to an end. You will be assimilated."

Senator Shinzon looked to the Praetor. The Praetor...shrugged. "If I were human, I would say...screw you. But I am Romulan."

Shinzon considered that. "As am I." True, he had been born a human. But humanity had died with its homeworld.

"Therefore we will respond as Romulans." The Praetor opened a channel via his console, then gave a sigh. "Very well. I acknowledge that you have outmatched us. We surrender." He silenced Shinzon with a wave of his hand. "Prepare to beam landing parties down."

"A lie, Praetor?" Shinzon mouthed silently. The Praetor lied very rarely.

"A hope in hell," the Praetor responded, and swapped channels. "Centurion Tal'Aura, disengage the safeties on your singularity core on my mark."

Tal'Aura went pale, but saluted. "I am prepared to give my life and my crew for the Empire."

The Praetor shook his head. "Thank you, but that is not what I require. Lower your shields." His hands made a flurry of motions at his desk console. "Mark."

Romulan singularity cores are something of a paradox-very nearly a perpetual motion machine. The mini-black hole they contain is just large enough not to quickly evaporate in a shower of Hawking radiation if unfed...and thus far too large to be easily moved around. Yet careful manipulation of their feeding generates far more than enough power to produce inertial dampers strong enough to render them mobile and prevent them from devouring the ship they inhabit.

The Borg matched transporter frequencies with the pad the Romulan Praetor had activated for them. His cooperation was unusual, but welcome. As the first landing party dematerialized, some unknown disturbance suddenly interfered with signal integrity; the hive automatically compensated, drawing more power to prevent the loss of useful materiel. The power drain was intense enough that the cubeship's inertial dampers were weakened, but they were unnecessary in a standard orbit anyway.

Then a black hole materialized inside the cube's superstructure, and it was far too late to abort.

"Cube has been destroyed," Tal'Aura reported tersely. "My congratulations on your clever attack, Praetor." Her tone indicated she was slightly annoyed not to have been entrusted with the transport herself.

"They will have adapted before we can make another attempt. The creativity of all our people will be required to divert the next attack," the Praetor said, hoping to soothe her ego. "I will have your ship towed into spacedock for core replacement."

"Thank you, Praetor. I must inform you that another ship is approaching Romulus at high warp. It appears to be a Cardassian Galor-class vessel."

"Fascinating. Allow it to approach, but scan it carefully for Borg nanotechnology." The Borg occasionally used stealth-assimilated vessels for sneak attacks.

"No Borg nanites detected, your Excellence. They have dropped out of warp directly into high orbit and are hailing...you, specifically."

"Put them through." The Praetor waved Shinzon closer. "Jagul Dukat. I confess my surprise. I have had no communication from Central Command regarding your visit."

Dukat nodded amiably, in accordance with his usual facade. "Under the circumstances, I have a fair amount of discretion. Terok Nor has recently received a defector from the Borg."

The Praetor raised an eyebrow. "A double agent, I presume? Such behavior from a drone is otherwise difficult to account for."

"The Obsidian Order." Dukat stated it flatly; no other explanation was required. "From him I received intelligence on a lost Federation superweapon."

"Jagul, we both know that the Federation never built superweapons. Surely you must question the veracity of such information. Moreover, I must ask why the Borg would not already have employed it, if they are aware of its existence."

"They have not made use of it because its location and precise specifications remain unknown. As for the rest...it was not constructed as a weapon, but you of all people know how it could be used as one."

The Praetor paused in surprise for almost a full second. "I know what you are referring to. I do not see how it could be recovered."

"Whatever can be invented once can be invented again." Dukat leaned forward intently. "We are nearly out of options. We must find it if any of us are to survive. Praetor Spock...please...give me Genesis."


	4. Dominion, Authority, and Power

For precisely one Terran year, the planetoid Regulus I had known life. And then that life had gone.

The tunnels that permeated the interior of Regulus I were coated in dust. The dust was no longer even organic, a casualty of the final phase of the deteriorating Genesis wave. Regulus I was, once more, what it had been before humanity reached it: a dead world.

Trapped at its center, however, something was very much alive.

"I don't understand the significance of this object," Dukat grumbled. "Why did the Federation care what happened here?"

"It did not," Spock said without inflection. "Regulus I was chosen for being completely inconsequential. If something went badly wrong with the project, at most only a few scientists would be harmed."

"And as I recall, something did go quite badly wrong." Dukat studied the instruments at the science station. "What are we looking for? Wouldn't the Borg have taken anything left behind?"

"The Borg indeed assimilated the space station Regula I," Spock explained, "but its computers automatically deleted all readily-accessible information on Project Genesis when Khan attacked a century before. There is nothing further worthy of their interest in the Mutara Sector...to the best of their knowledge."

"Then what don't they know about?"

"The automated monitoring stations. The interior of Regulus I was used as a testbed for the re-creation of a world. No team of half a dozen scientists could have observed all that. The remaking was monitored at all stages by scanners embedded deep in the tunnel walls." Spock paused. "And below the central chamber, that information should still be stored. Whatever data still exists on the Genesis matrix...lies there."

"Torpedoes? A program?" Dukat sounded at once hopeful and skeptical.

"Information," Spock said with a sigh. "If we desire Genesis, I fear we must recreate it."

"Well, I'm sure you understand it." Dukat revealed a nervous grin. "You were a physicist and computer scientist, right?"

"In fact I do not." Dukat's feeble smile vanished like light falling over an event horizon. "The physics behind the project was far beyond my comprehension."

Dukat spluttered incomprehensibly.

"Our computers will help. And the science of physics has advanced far enough that we can doubtless find some assistance. But for the rest...we will have to guess."

"Guess? I didn't come all the way out here for guesses, Spock."

"I have been told that my guesses are very good."

On the deck of the Pareto, the silence stretched long.

"I didn't expect an immediate response to the broadcast," Quark grumbled, "but I expected something."

"We've visited several planets and warned their inhabitants," the Kai said softly. "Though I suppose the best any of them will be able to do is run."

"There don't seem to be any major starfaring powers for parsecs in any direction," he muttered in response. "Surely this sector isn't ithat/i backward."

"What does your instinct as a trader say?" the Kai asked him. "Any direction we should go? Did anything they say give you a hint?"

Quark mulled that over a moment. "Nothing they said, but...there are two main kinds of sectors with no major powers. Some of them really are backward, and everyone's just emerging into space."

"I didn't get that impression." The Kai tapped her fingers idly on her console. "Several of these people have the capacity to at least have colonized a few other systems."

"But they haven't done it," Quark said. "Which implies that something-or someone-is preventing them. And that leads us to the other kind of weak sector. The one with a powerful neighbor. There iis/i a major power around here somewhere, one that nobody wants to talk about and that's keeping spacefaring cultures from striking out on their own. We just have to find them."

"An empire that no one wants to talk about," the Kai put in, "is unlikely to be friendly."

"Look, Adami, anyone is friendly compared to the Borg. If these people have the slightest sense of self-preservation, they're going to want to send ships through the wormhole to keep invaders out of their territory. In fact, the less friendly they are the better-it means they'll have a big fleet."

Morn turned around in his seat. He'd grown unusually brooding as the trip dragged on. He opened his mouth...and a proximity alarm sounded. "Incoming vessel," the ship's computer announced in the voice of a seductive Orion female. The Kai gave Quark a peculiar look.

"I was going to get that changed, I swear."

"Well...don't worry about it now, Quark. Hail them."

Quark did so. "This is the free trader Pareto. We've detected your ship. Please respond?"

The viewscreen flickered on, revealing a scaled and serious face with a device covering one eye. "I am First Hakan'aval, commanding Jem'Hadar Attack Vessel 342. We have word that you have been interfering with shipping in this area. You must leave." The being's tone was clipped and harsh, but not uncultured. A professional soldier, most likely.

"Er, isn't there some way we can talk to whoever's in charge first?"

"I am in charge. We are talking." There was no sign of a smile on the alien's face, though he might not have been able to make one. Reading the expressions of new species was always a tricky business, but Quark doubted this fellow was joking.

"I'm trying to say we have an important message for your superiors, whoever they are. Haven't you gotten our distress call?"

"A distress call is not an issue I need pass along. If your ship is in need of repairs we will give them. If you need supplies we can escort you to a world where you may trade. Briefly."

Quark took a deep breath. Clearly this fellow was a flunky, ship commander or no. "It's not a ship distress call, First Hakan'aval. It's a civilization distress call. And don't tell me that's not your concern, because I'm guessing you're out here to guard the borders, right? I'm sorry if I'm an illegal alien here, but I'm about to be the least of your immigration problems."

Hakan'aval stood there unmoving for a moment. Then... "You will need to speak to the Vorta." There was no clue what a Vorta might be. Perhaps the next rank up? "We will bring you to one. If your ship makes any hostile maneuvers, we will destroy it. That is your only warning."

Quark spread his hands broadly. "Do I look like a hostile kind of guy?" The viewscreen went blank, and he sagged back in his chair. Captain Morn stared at him. The Kai stared at him. "All things considered, I'd say that went well."

Morn flicked a switch, causing an image of the alien vessel to appear onscreen. It was an insectile thing, with a pair of combined weapons/drive outriggers, and though it wasn't much larger than the Pareto it seemed to bristle with gunports. It moved slowly away, and Morn set a course after it.

"Quark," the Kai said, "you seem a little more pleased than I would have thought that warranted. Why do you think he's going to help us?"

"Well, first off, he's a soldier. Second, we really haven't been doing much to interfere with trade, which means these people take their borders very seriously."

"It took him a week to find us."

"Kai...space is ibig/i. Even with automated long-range sensors all over the place, it's hard to pinpoint a lone vessel in interstellar space. They found us fast. Third, he has very little leeway to deal with us, which means that, captain or not, he's not that important a guy. And since he is a ship captain, there's someone with an awful lot of authority up there somewhere. We've found our major power. Now we just have to hope they're major enough."

Julian Bashir's eyes opened slowly. "Garak?" he asked.

But it was Anneka bending over him, not the Cardassian. "I'm sorry, Julian. There's been no sign of him lately."

"You don't suppose he's escaped?" Anneka gave him a look that asked if he had lost his mind. "Right, of course not." Still, if anyone could have escaped the Borg it would have been Elim Garak. Garak had an astonishing capacity for creative thinking, which Julian supposed made sense for a spy. About the only things Julian knew that Garak didn't had been medical information-of no use here-and Terran memory-palace techniques, which Garak had grasped almost instantly and offered some backhanded praise for. It was, naturally, the only kind Garak ever gave.

Bashir sat up in bed. It wasn't really a bed, of course, and he wasn't really awake. Quite the opposite. "You know what the real trouble with Unimatrix Zero is?"

Anneka quirked an eyebrow at him. "Our inability to affect the real world?"

"I was going to say, the fact that there's nothing to do. I mean, yes, we have our plans and dreams. And as a sociological observer, this place is fascinating. But I can't even offer real medical treatment here. An engineer could go mad from frustration, because here, things work because you imagine them working. In fact, the more you know, the harder it is to make something that will go. You're never certain all the pieces are right."

"If only we could just imagine a way out..." Anneka trailed off, thinking. "Is it possible he was rescued from outside? De-assimilated?"

"In theory, it could be done," Julian opined. "It's a matter of removing or deactivating certain critical implants. Actually carrying it out, though...first you'd need a drone, who would have to be thoroughly immobilized and isolated. And then you'd have hours of complicated surgical procedures. The implants would continually adapt. More drones would come to stop you. I'd have to expect that any such procedure would be more trouble than it was worth."

"But it's possible?"

"Possible, I suppose. Feasible...no."

A harsh voice came from over Anneka's shoulder, grating like steel on steel. "At least you are discussing the problem again."

"We never really stop, Jolene," Anneka said with a shrug. "But in the absence of progress, sometimes it seems rational to take a break." She moved aside.

Jolene, despite her name, was not human or even humanoid. Every so often even the most alien of naming conventions produced a match; Jolene (the Metallic) was a crystalline insectoid being who appeared to Julian's eye to be enclosed in a silken environmental suit. Of course, to the Tholian's perception, it was the humanoids who were in suits, and Unimatrix Zero was extremely hot, massively pressurized, and highly acidic-perfect.

Jolene was, so far, the only member of her species to appear in the mindscape. As intensely xenophobic as she was social, the Tholian had sulked in an isolated area for weeks before opening communication. It had been a desperate grasp for any kind of companionship at all. Periodically she still retreated into silence.

"It is a deep law of the universe that no system can be perfectly isolated," Jolene insisted. "Any receiver can become a transmitter; any transmitter, a receiver. We must persist until we find a means of communication or escape."

Julian shrugged. "Still, we might not be able to discover the proper method, Jolene. We are, if you will pardon the expression, only human." He smiled, hoping she would understand that he was joking.

Instead, she made an annoyed creaking sound at him. "None of us are only 'human'. Not now."

Anneka made a gentle, conciliatory motion with her hand. "Have your attempts to transmit to the others been successful?"

"Indeed not. I have sent pulses across the Lattice from here, but the others either cannot receive them or cannot respond." Jolene maintained that once the Borg had finally worked out how to assimilate the Tholians, the entire species had been transformed ien masse/i. Julian wasn't certain whether or not he hoped she was deluding herself out of loneliness. The alternative, after all, was that none of them were here because the majority had been destroyed. "I know that you are not telepathic, but you should nonetheless attempt to contact the others with your thoughts. We are all linked through the hive mind."

"We can't consciously use that connection," Anneka argued. "It's a chain to enslave us, not a tool for us to free ourselves."

"Make interesting patterns with your mind," the Tholian snapped back. "The Borg consciousness craves these things. It will seek them out, even within itself."

"And then what?" Julian queried. Jolene had yet to present a plan beyond this point, but he sensed that she had something more than she had admitted to.

"Any level of a system, properly manipulated, can be made to offer access to the other levels. It is the same principle as before. You merely have to offer the correct input. Then we can assume control."

"You're suggesting that we can hack the Borg Collective? Er...old Earth term," he added, seeing both women staring at him. "It's audacious. And quite insane."

"Nonetheless," Jolene insisted, "it is our only hope."

The Borg probe hung in space, exuding a sense of menace far out of proportion to its size. By the standard of most fleets that had once roamed this area of space, it was a midsize cruiser; by Borg standards it was about equivalent to a shuttlecraft. Of course, the Collective seemed to dislike its drones being on their own. The lozenge-shaped vessel probably held a few dozen of them.

"Have they detected us?"

"No indication they have, Gul Odo. Shall we attack?"

"Wait." Odo watched the officer fidget. "What do our readings say?"

"Standard armament. Borg gravitic-pulse disruptors, no active shields." The Borg never seemed to travel with shields up, that Odo had seen. As the war dragged on, they bothered to raise them less and less.

"Life-forms? They have a surprise for us, or they wouldn't be lurking there."

"With all due respect, sir, they don't know we're here." Dal Damar seemed perpetually offended at serving beneath a non-Cardassian. "All due respect" frequently seemed to mean "no respect at all". Not a good thing in a first officer.

"Life-form readings. Now." Odo assumed a stern expression, and Damar turned toward the science station expectantly.

"I...I'm having trouble getting a clear reading, sir. It's not the implants, I'm used to those. I'm picking up some kind of superheated crystalline structures..."

"Superheated...?" Damar stepped behind the console. "Let me see that, Bajoran. Report to cleaning detail. You clearly don't know how to use this station."

"Belay that order. Damar, what do you see?"

Damar's eyes went wide. "Superheated crystalline structures covered in nanoactive material. I don't understand, sir."

"Shields up! Intensively scan those nebulae and prepare to fire. Get to your post, Dal Damar."

"Gul, what-?"

Odo let his form flow into a harsher, more Cardassian appearance. Nuisance though it was, imperfect though it was, it usually seemed to work. "It's a trap, you idiot!"

"Sir, we have additional contacts! Multiple probes emerging from the plasma storms!"

"They knew we were here. They lured us here to the Badlands, Damar. Now we spring the trap and find out what it is."

"I'm sorry, sir. Can you tell what they're doing?"

"Not yet. Call in the fleet."

"Sir, they're laying down some kind of force trail behind them. None of the beams are aimed at us. I don't understand it." The Bajoran sounded harried, but grateful.

"Tholians," Odo muttered. "Those drones are Tholian." The web began to enclose them. "Fire on these ships at my mark." He pointed to the screen. "Here, here, here, and here. Mass drivers only."

The Dugal shuddered. Mass driver launches were generally rougher than beam weapons fire or even torpedo launches, even with the inertial dampers. Duranium shells massing as much as a shuttlecraft each slammed into the Borg probes Odo had indicated. Only one struck a shield; the rest hit their targets at a substantial fraction of lightspeed, spraying debris. Explosions rocked the vessels, and key strands of the web sputtered and went out, leaving a gap. Dal Kirim didn't wait for orders, but rocketed the Dugal free of the energy weave.

"We've never encountered Tholian drones before," said the Bajoran science officer. Odo realized he didn't recall her name; he'd have to correct that.

"I suspect that may be the surprise," Odo acknowledged. "They've assimilated the Tholian's web weapons. We may have been no more than a test. Did we get clear of them?"

"No ships in pursuit," Damar noted.

The Bajoran fidgeted before responding, "Yes, sir, but...I'm picking up anomalous energy readings in the service tubes. I think we may have some aboard."

Odo nodded. "Then we will have to find out what they're made of. Damar, you have the bridge. I'll lead the security team."

"Sir," Damar blurted out, "security protocols-"

"Dal Damar, the ship itself is at risk. Not to brag, but I am its best chance of survival. Now take the-" A burst of sparks erupted from the ceiling, followed by a jet black claw. "Everyone off the bridge! Now!"

"I'm sorry sir! They were closer-"

Odo cut her off. "It doesn't matter! Move!" The five drones that dropped from the ceiling were shaped essentially the same as Tholians had been-that much was unchanged-but their translucent crystalline skins were crusted over with grey-black exoplating until nothing could be seen of their original coloration. They wore no environment suits, of course; they no longer needed them, covered as they were. Tools jutted from the sides of their left or right claws.

One of the security guards began firing his mass-driver rifle, echoes racketing across the bridge; there was no point using handheld phasers or disruptors anymore, not with the Borg. Cracks shivered across the drone's black carapace, releasing steaming vapors. The fourth shot shattered its head, and a gout of superheated liquid burst free, spraying the guard with searing polysilicate blood. A splash of it took him in the neck, so hot it melted his flesh away before it could even burst into flame, and he toppled over burning. The other guards stumbled backward, stunned, but continued to fire. What else could they do?

"Get off the bridge," Odo urged. Everyone but the guards were in the corridor now, though the doors were still open. The guards seemed reluctant to leave their captain, but all they could do here was die or be assimilated.

Odo had other options. He seized the doors and slammed them shut behind the last of the security guards, sealing the manual lock with a hastily-formed tendril, and turned to face the Tholian drones. "Resistance is futile," the things screeched in unison. "You will be assimilated."

"We'll see about that," Odo muttered back, and pounded the nearest drone with a massive solid fist compressed to the density of steel. Its plating shattered. Viscous liquid crystal coated Odo's arm, but not even such intense heat could break the chemical bonds that held his morphogenetic matrix together. The drone fell to the floor, legs still clicking and scraping.

He started to turn-in this humanoid form, most of his sensorium was concentrated in his head as if he were a solid being-and felt a claw drive itself deep into his back. For a moment it felt almost cool; then the nanoprobes seared their way into the fluid of his body. He could feel them, swirling, all the way down at the molecular level, twisting at his substance. At the scale on which the probes operated, his body was no less solid than they were. But they were...seemed, at least...disoriented, unfamiliar with his noncellular structure. Still, it was the Borg's nature to adapt.

He had best not give them a chance. He focused his awareness of his body down to the level on which the nanoprobes operated and squeezed, compressing their tiny, intricate mechanisms until they collapsed and fused into a single solid mass. Odo considered spitting it out, but the Borg would not be impressed; he simply let it fall from his body and drop to the floor.

The drone's claw was still inside his back, undamaged. It made an incomprehensible squawk. Odo opened his mouth to respond, and felt a familiar tingle. "Comput-" he started to say, warning it to change the shield frequencies...

...and was gone.

"The last of the data's being downloaded, Spock. I hope it's enough." Dukat studied his tricorder. "Protomatter. Rearrangement at the subnucleonic level. Biometric patterning. I have to admit I don't understand any of this. Though I suppose in some respects it sounds like a replicator."

"I understand some of it," the Praetor replied. "And yes, the principles are similar. However, the Genesis wave is to a replicator as...transwarp drive is to an animal-driven chariot. Beyond that, I regret I cannot explain further." He shook his head. "I myself lack enough understanding to make better analogies."

"I find it hard to believe that a Vulcan scientist would admit not being able to comprehend something." Dukat waved his hands expansively. "You're always so...self-assured."

"You mean 'arrogant'?" Spock offered him a wry half-smile. "Arrogance was present in far too much abundance on Vulcan. No species is completely lacking in faults."

"Except the Borg, apparently," Dukat muttered.

"Including the Borg," Spock insisted. "Arrogance is a factor among them as well. If fortune favors us, it will be their undoing."

"Download complete," Dukat said with relief. "Now we can get out of this place. It feels like a tomb."

"It is," Spock said with a sigh. "The graveyard of the Federation's dream. Peaceable cooperation. Abundance for all peoples."

"I'm sorry," Dukat said skeptically.

"You needn't be," the Praetor replied. "The technology here makes the graveyard obsolete. I am, quite literally, living proof." He glanced upward/ "My captain once said that Genesis made him feel young. I feel young as well...like a child playing with the console of an antimatter reactor."

"Such a child, well-educated, may save his ship all the same," Dukat opined.

"Or destroy it. But we shall see. I suppose we truly have nothing to lose. We must go."

Waypoint 1304 seemed an unremarkable and inauspicious place for a meeting, Quark thought. Little more than a hollowed-out asteroid tumbling through space. Then it tractored the Pareto inside, and he had to revise that opinion. Here, at what had to be the back end of nowhere, not even in a star system unless you counted the brown dwarf this thing was orbiting, a dozen of the insectile Jem-Hadar vessels were being refitted. That kind of profligate wasteful expense, to patrol such empty space...

This "Dominion" was rich beyond Quark's wildest dreams. And right now, rich meant "stocked up on weapons". It was the best possible outcome to his search. OF course, there would be a catch. He'd take any good offer, though, catch and all.

"You will wait here," said First Hakan'aval, and tapped a button on his wrist. His transmission vanished, leaving the viewscreen blank.

The Kai shifted nervously back and forth. "I have a bad feeling about this," she said.

"So do I," Quark admitted. "But I have a better feeling at the same time, so they cancel out. Under other circumstances, I'd be afraid these people were about to space us. Right now, I think I'd be relieved to die so easily instead of being hunted down by the Borg."

"A valid point," the Kai said and stopped shuffling her feet. "The question is, who is this Vorta who's going to meet with us?"

"Good question," said the viewscreen. It flickered on to reveal a pallid humanoid with long lobes running down the sides of his face. Quark tried not to snicker; it would be bad form. "And I am here to give you answers. The first is: Weyoun."


	5. A Muse of Fire

"Are you ready?"

Odo stirred himself. He had been resting comfortably in the bottom of some sort of plastic sac. Now he rose up, shifting, churning, and assumed humanoid form. The sac flattened its bottom layer to the floor, giving him room to move about...a little. He looked around the room; beyond his flexible cell lay a maze of consoles and equipment recognizable only as Borg. "For what?" he growled.

"To help me," said the deep feminine voice. "To bring order and justice to the universe."

"Order I can believe," Odo countered, "but the Borg are no friends of justice."

"When all are Borg," the voice teased, "all will be equal, and perfect justice will be achieved."

"What of the claims we have against the Borg?" he argued. "For the destruction you've spread through the galaxy?"

"They will be owed by all to all, and therefore paid."

Odo searched the area within his limited view for the speaker, but found no one. "For the Borg, you seem intent on justifying yourself to a lesser being."

A humanoid head and shoulders descended from the ceiling, slick with moisture, grey with metal beneath the skin. "Strange you should say that, when I am the Borg."

"I always thought there were more of you," Odo said drily. Obviously they were having trouble assimilating him, but why the banter?

"Many more," came the response, "and none. I am the Collective." A body assembled itself from parts scattered about the area, and the squirming cybernetic spine dangling from the head pulled itself inside, joining the two. The Borg entity stretched itself and sighed. "Like you, I am the One who is Many."

"That's nothing like me," Odo scoffed.

"Then you don't know." The Borg's remarks oozed false pity. "You haven't met any others of your kind. How sad for you."

"If you have, then why are you taking so long? You should know how to assimilate me already." Odo probed at the boundaries of the bag they had him in. No weaknesses...yet.

The Borg entity stepped through the sac as if it were nothing at all. "The Great Link is still beyond our frontier...for now. But we have...met. And now we can begin to learn about one another."

"By assimilating me, no doubt."

The Borg let out a sigh. "How petty a way to look at it. We want to see you grow. To expand beyond your individual limits. So we invite you to come with us."

"And what if I decline?" Odo countered.

"Once you've been properly...stimulated?" The Borg woman laughed, quietly, almost naturally. "Odo, don't be silly."

"Ah," said the android. "How interesting. Friends, look what Foros has done." The heavy-browed aliens crowded around.

Spock peered at the tiny hologram. "The world is not breaking," he said. "Foros has made the world not break."

Foros manipulated the controls without speaking. The planetary image grew steadily greener. "I found a thing to make it grow," she said.

"Spock," Dukat complained, "what is this nonsense? These beings are even more imbecilic than Bajorans."

The Pakled all glared at him. "I found a thing to make it not break," Foros said stubbornly. "I found a thing to make it grow."

Spock looked up from the scope. "Pakled language centers are not well-developed by the standards of most humanoids. Their practical skill at engineering, however, is beyond reproach. Foros has found a way to create a series of soliton formations within the Genesis wave-and in so doing, stabilize its effects. Now the work of describing the process mathematically falls to us, so that we can apply it in less specific ways. Nonetheless, Dukat, the breakthrough is hers."

"Well, award her the Nobel-Zee Magnes prize," Dukat grumbled. "Whose idea was it to use these beings for research and development? What good does it do us if they can't communicate their results?"

The android set his jaw. "I can communicate them. And it was my idea, spoonhead. Together we have produced innovations the Federation could only dream of."

"We are smart," said Foros, not backing down. "We are strong. We are nothing if not persistent. We make things go."

Gently, the android patted her shoulder. "All of that and more," Lore agreed. "Now it is time to go. Now it is time to break the Borg."

"We are the Resistance," the Pakled all agreed.

Gul Kira glanced at the screen and turned pale. "Five," she repeated. "Five cubes."

"I'm afraid so," Leeta told her. "I don't know how we can beat that many."

"Start praying," Kira said.

"They are not on course for the station," said Glinn Duntesk. "I believe they are headed for the wormhole."

Kira squeezed her eyes shut. "Prepare to open fire on them."

"On five cubes?" Duntesk asked coldly.

"If the Borg get what they're after," she told him, still not looking, leaning against the console, "the Union is so much carrion. Are you all right with that?" The glinn grunted and focused on his work.

"They're stopping short of the wormhole," Leeta reported. Kira opened her eyes.

I am Sisko of Borg. Lower your defenses and surrender your habitat. You will be assimilated. Your biological and technological diversity will be added to our own. Your culture will adapt to service ours. Resistance is futile.

For a moment nothing happened, and Kira dared to hope.

Then the wormhole spiraled open.

"My mind to your mind," Tuvok intoned, and Deanna Troi answered, "My thoughts to your thoughts." His hands enclosed her face; her eyes gazed into his. "Our minds are merging. Our minds are one."

"Damnit," Bashir muttered. "If I had a real tricorder, I could measure the effects this is having on their physical bodies. But this place..."

"This place is not a place," Jolene squawked. "This is a representation, not reality. You are linked to all the technology of the Borg. You are linked to them. Try."

"...to your mind..." More Vulcans gathered in around Tuvok, uneasily laying hands on his shoulders, and the shoulders of those behind him, joining the mantra. "...our thoughts..." The Betazoids, less reluctant but less needful of physical contact, crowded in behind Deanna. "...are merging..."

Bashir was not a telepath. He couldn't possibly... No. He was fused to the Borg. His mind was already linked cybernetically to the others. "Our minds," he said, joining in, "are one." The power of it brushed against his thoughts, and he struggled to hold himself just slightly apart. He needed...needed... A datacrawl scrolled behind his eyes. "Heartbeats...stable. Breathing rate...slightly lowered. All node functions...coherent. My mind to...to...my mind to your bodies." Jolene hissed approval. Bashir laid a hand on her shoulder.

Deanna and Tuvok turned. "The joining is stable," they intoned together. "Your brain is unlike ours, Jolene. But the Collective can moderate the link."

"Of course," the Tholian said, "or we would have burned you out on assimilation. I am ready." She raised her foreclaws.

"Here I There You

I There You Here

There You Here I

You Here I There"

It was a Tholian iterative axiom, Bashir realized, a poetic form that created symmetry in space as well as time. He had never heard one before. It was no simpler than the Vulcan mantras, not really...and at once he understood that the meaning was the same.

"...to your mind..."

"I There You Here"

"...to your thoughts..."

"There You Here I"

The gestalt mind reverberated power through the Collective link. Humanoid minds touched Tholian; the fusion reached out as Julian had done, but with far greater force than he could muster.

"Our minds are...There...we are...the Borg...we are one...our thoughts...to the vessel...surrender...comply...Resistance is futile...Comply, you will comply..."

Bashir's body dissolved. Unimatrix Zero dissolved. He was adrift in scrolling symbols, a columnar sea of Borg green. Windows flared before his vision: cubeships, planetary orbits, transwarp conduits...

The Collective consciousness seized him by the scruff and began to shake him, only to be met by something more organic, another joined consciousness...the great Meld the Vulcans and Bajorans had made, it engulfed him, he was one and more than one, and together they reached out to a vessel approaching a spatial distortion, a blue beacon of light. Close...they were so close...

The Borg Collective turned its attention on them then, the full blinding gaze of a hundred trillion minds fused as one, and the Meld shuddered at the impact. Shuddered...dissolved. Broken, they fell to pieces.

Six of Seven toppled from its alcove. A fragment of an independent thought flickered across the drone's mind (most assuredly we shall all hang separately) and was gone.

There was only the hive.

Terok Nor opened fire with all phaser banks. All photon torpedoes launched, a volley that could reduce a planet to a ball of white-hot plasma. Energies comparable to the inner atmosphere of a sun converged on the rearmost cube.

And it shrugged them off. The Borg had adapted. The Borg always adapted.

Gul Kira sagged against the console, barely holding herself erect with both hands. The long fight had come to an end. The Borg were invincible. Inevitable.

Why do the Prophets weep?

The Borg cubes formed a pyramid before the mouth of the wormhole. The lead ship hovered closer. Not to pass through, she suspected, only to enter. And what then? What had the Emissary planned?

Please, she begged. One more miracle. One last Tear. Help us!

The Celestial Temple erupted in fire. Ships poured through the wormhole's maw, tiny like flies before a behemoth. Stung, the Borg cube wobbled and staggered. Little insectile craft wrapped the Borg in a haze of tractor beams and spun them up, wrenching off fragments and hurling them into the void. Energies the computers didn't recognize seared away great bubbles of mass from the cubes.

"I am First Halan'arad of Jem'Hadar Attack Fleet 3. We have come to guard the Anomaly. Hailing the space station known as Terok Nor. Respond, Terok Nor."

Kira drew in breath. "This is Gul Kira of Terok Nor. The Jem'Hadar have my thanks, First Halan'arad. I thought we were done for."

"Gul Kira! You're alive!" Quark's bulbous head popped up onto the widescreen next to Halan'arad's scaly neck.

"I am, Quark. I never thought I'd be happy to see your face, but you just pulled our lobes out of the fire."

"Don't relax, Gul Kira," the Jem'Hadar said. His tone was cultured but naturally harsh. "Once this skirmish is over, we must discuss the terms of your entry into the Dominion."

That sounded ominous. What had Quark offered these people? And yet, another Borg cube was collapsing into shattered pieces off toward the sun. Kira bowed her head and wept like the Prophets: for joy.


End file.
